By Kate Daloz
I use post-its obsessively in my own life, and I’ve begun using them in writing center sessions as well. What I like about post-its is that they’re very modular. They allow a writer to move within a session from jumbled, non-linear idea generation toward the linear, streamlined presentation that the reader will ultimately need. The fact that they’re movable lets you capture an idea in writing and then, in a later moment, decide where and if it fits into the bigger argument. The fact that they’re small also forces you to summarize arguments, evidence and claims into sentences which can later be used as topic sentences or as transitions between sections. I also like that they’re brightly colored, so they seem sort of frivolous and therefore low-stakes. They’re also easily disposable so it’s easy to try on and reject weak ideas quickly.
Three ways of using post-it notes in WC sessions:
1. A writer came in with a draft of an 8-page persuasive essay. She was feeling overwhelmed by the professor’s request to reorganize the paragraphs and to integrate specific counterarguments. Instead of looking at her draft, I asked her to set it aside and to tell me about her ideas while I took notes. She had a strong, persuasive thesis and lots of evidence to back it up. I started by asking her to summarize the thesis in one sentence and I wrote it on a pink post-it and stuck it at the top of the desk space. Then I asked her to start going through the evidence and arguments she planned to use. As she explained each one, I wrote it on a white post-it and stuck it below the pink one. As they amassed, I stuck them near each other, loosely following her own verbal organization (if she said, “another reason…” I stuck the second one under the first). When we came to the end of the reasons that came easily to her mind, we had about 12-15 white post-its.
Throughout our conversation, when a counterargument emerged–either directly identified as such by her, or highlighted by me following her verbal cues (“Well, some people don’t agree because they think…”)–I wrote it on a blue post-it and put it nearby. After we had a few of these, we began grouping argument and counter-argument together. In each case, as she noticed the logical flow from her initial argument to the counterargument to the evidence she wanted to use to refute it, we rearranged the post-its to capture that organization, so that we had little groupings of white-blue-white post-its.
After we took a moment to admire how much material she had to work with, we started talking about how to organize it. She identified two categories right away; these headings I wrote on yellow post its and stuck in a row under the pink. We then moved the relevant white post-its under the appropriate category, now organized into a tidy vertical line. After a little bit of discussion, she also realized that the reason the third category we were considering felt unruly was that it actually needed to be split in two. I crumpled up the post-it on which I’d written our first idea and quickly wrote the new categories. Right away, we saw how the white post-its fit into each. When we had one extra white post-it without a spot, we discussed whether it needed to be reframed to fit within an existing category or discarded.
At the end of the session, she took home four evenly-sized columns of white and blue post-its, nested under yellow category headings, nested under the pink thesis. We noted that her 8-page paper had essentially been broken into 4 2-page papers which made her feel better about the amount of work she needed to do. She also noted that her existing draft mostly covered one of the categories, but that it also included little pieces of the other categories scattered throughout (the disorganization her professor had noted). We talked about the benefits of starting a new document for the newly-organized next draft and “importing” existing, developed paragraphs from the old draft into the new, rather than trying to revise the old draft’s structure.
2. Another writer needed to develop topic sentences for an English paper. Again, I didn’t look at the existing draft, but asked him to tell me his thesis (pink note) and then talk me through the evidence he planned to use (white notes). Then we looked at each white note and tried to answer the question, “How does this piece of evidence help explain this thesis?” As he generated answers, I wrote them in complete sentences on yellow post-its and stuck them between the yellow and white notes on the desk. In a few cases, we saw that one yellow note (topic sentence) actually covered more than one white note (pieces of evidence) so we moved them accordingly and then talked about how to use transitions to signal to the reader that the same piece of argument continued through more than one paragraph. Then we looked back at the draft and identified the paragraphs that corresponded with our notes. He left with a set of clear topic sentences and a strong sense of where (and why) they needed to be inserted into the essay.
3. Another writer had a draft in which she had identified a text’s theme and had close-read appropriate passages, but was having trouble articulating a thesis that was sufficiently complex and inclusive for the evidence she’d found. I started by asking her to briefly talk me through each piece of evidence (white notes) and explain to me the patterns she’d noted (yellow notes, placed above). Then we tried on a series of potential thesis sentences, thinking about whether each one sufficiently captured the span of ideas indicated by the yellow notes. We used the “Useful Language for Thesis Statements” templates and eventually found a phrasing that worked (pink note, placed at the top). We looked back at the yellow notes to double-check that they served as explanations for the new, pink-note thesis.
Published April 21, 2016
